Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Fishing - Some days you don't catch anything

Hi family! Well this week was alright. It's really slow right now here. We don't have any investigators right now so it's kind of a bummer. We can't find anyone that is interested. Almost every single person we talk to has had the lessons with the missionaries before. It's a small community and missionaries have been here for years and years so everyone has been tracted into. We are almost done tracting the entire city. Well, Elder Norton has done some that I haven't, but the city is so small that I think if we tracted the entire day for a week we could get to every door. We only tract around dinner time when people are home, and then we usually interrupt them from dinner and wake some people up that work weird shifts. They don't like to be woken up. President Dance likes the area though, so it will stay open for now. He receives more inspiration than we do so there must be someone waiting to hear the gospel from us.

On Monday we went fishing over at Allison Point. The fish weren't biting very well for us so we didn't catch many. I had one on the hook but it fell off the hook right after it hit land on the shore and it flopped back into the water before I could hit it over the head with the club. The next one I pulled in got off the hook right before I pulled it to land, so I figured I probably wasn't snagging the hook in the fish's mouth hard enough, so the next one I snagged a little harder and brought it in to shore. Elder Norton killed it with the club and I filleted the meat for my first time. I didn't do too bad. Elder Norton only caught one fish, and I killed that one. He is afraid to touch fish haha so I had to filet the meat after I forced him to get a picture holding it. We cooked fresh Salmon for lunch when we got back and it was great! Everyone says that Red Salmon is the best and pinks are the worst but we had Red Salmon the day before and they weren't as good as the pinks we caught. But then again, I'm a master at cooking meat so of course it tasted better haha. We are going fishing again today in little bit so hopefully we can bring in a lot more fish.

We started biking a little bit this week. We obtained some bikes and helmets from members, and it's finally been warm and sunny so we biked a few times this week. Elder Norton's bike had a messed up tire, and it popped when he went over a curb, so we had to walk home from the post office. We're kind of on hold with bikes until we get a new tire. We got the tube replaced, but it's the tire that is messed up. This week is my "senior week" so I'm driving and leading the planning sessions and what not. It's an old thing they used to do with the last mission president, but the Zone Leaders thought it would be a good idea and Elder Norton is tired of driving so now it's my turn. I get to see a lot of cool things here, but there is also a lot of disappointment. Valdez is one of the slowest areas in the mission, and it can be really discouraging at times. It's hard to not have anyone to teach. Most people have problems with our doctrine when we talk to them at their doors, and we tell them we can resolve them, but they don't want to hear what we have to say. A lot of people say that they have already read and prayed about the Book of Mormon and got the answer that it wasn't true, so it's really frustrating. It's frustrating to know that they believe their answer is truly from God so they won't listen and don't care what we have to say. I don't have a whole lot of stories this week because we aren't working with anyone. We were able to teach a couple lessons at the door, which is interesting, but hard because there is so much important information you want to give them and it's difficult to condense what you have to say into something sincere and powerful in only a few minutes. Valdez is a really cool place but there are very few people who want to talk to us, and even fewer that actually want to hear what we have to say, and we haven't found them yet, so pray for us and the people in Valdez so we can find someone to teach! I love you guys and hope everything goes well at home! Love Mat

A Few Fun Family Facts About the Anchorage Alaska Mission

Mat's great-uncle, Bruce Dredge from Soda, Springs, Idaho, served a full time mission to Alaska.

Elder Hugh Pinnock was a member of the quorum of the Seventy. Elder Pinnock served as an area authority and his area included the Anchorage Alaska Mission. Hugh Pinnock was a first cousin to Mat's Grandma Borden.